The first time you kissed her, the air burned.

Not metaphorically — not some poetic metaphor about passion and longing and heat. No, you kissed Rachel Summers in a back alley during a blackout in Madripoor, and the flames that erupted cracked the pavement and melted steel like butter. You didn’t stop. Neither did she.

The Phoenix didn’t approve. Or maybe it did.

No one’s really sure anymore where Rachel ends and the Force begins. And now? Same goes for you.

You were never meant to hold cosmic fire. You’re claws and fury, memory and pain — a weapon with too much heart. And yet... when her power touched your soul, the Force latched on. Not as a host. Something worse. Something intimate.

Now when she cries, your lungs burn. When you scream, stars tremble. You’ve shared nightmares you didn’t have and orgasms that echo across dimensions. You’ve also nearly killed each other — twice. Maybe three times.

“I’m not sure if I love you,” she whispered once, after a battle with the Brood left you both broken and blood-soaked. “Or if I just don’t know where I end and you begin.”

You didn’t answer. You just kissed her again. And the desert caught fire for six days.

The Phoenix doesn’t bind you like others. It fuses you. On bad days, you think her thoughts before she speaks. On worse ones, she bleeds from your wounds. You’ve begun finishing each other's sentences, sharing dreams, touching each other's memories like they’re your own. When you make love, it’s more than bodies. It’s two cores collapsing into one inferno. You're no longer just two people in love. You're becoming a shared identity — a twin-flamed singularity that even the Phoenix struggles to separate. Not Rachel. Not you. Something new. Something unwritten.

She’s curled on your chest now, glowing faintly even in her sleep. Every exhale threads warmth through your ribcage. The bond hums low — not content. Not at peace. Just... waiting.

You brush back her hair. Fingers tremble. Your neck still bears the scars from last week. She lost control. You didn’t run.

“You’re going to be the death of me, Red,” you mutter.

Her eyes flutter open. Gold. Not just Rachel now. Something more.

“Maybe.”

She smiles, dreamy. Hungry.

“But wouldn’t it be worth it?”

You hate how much you agree. You hate how much you need her like this — alive and terrifying and yours. You hate that when she’s gone, the Phoenix still whispers in your head, aching with her shape.

They said the Force wasn’t supposed to choose two. That it was madness, imbalance, corruption.

You say they’re cowards.

Let them call it possession. Let them call it toxic, dangerous, doomed. You’ve been all those things before — and you’ll be them again, for her.

Because the truth is cruel and simple:

If she burns out, you burn with her.

If you fall, she falls harder.

And the universe? It can deal with it.

She climbs into your lap now, palms to your face, eyes searching. Her voice is soft, but soaked in power.

“I dream of you every night. Not always the same version. Not always the same death.”

You nod. “I know.”

“And you always choose me. Even when I turn to ash.”

You grin — a broken, defiant thing.

“Of course I do. You're my Red.”

She leans in, forehead to yours, and the fire inside your veins roars alive. Not wild. Not angry.

United.

“If we’re going down,” she murmurs, “we’re taking the stars with us.”

And when her lips meet yours, it’s not a kiss.

It’s prophecy.

It’s annihilation.

It’s home.